Born of the Sun (36 page)

They had stared at the ground beneath them as if mesmerized. “Not a good position to fight from,” Cutha said at last, his face and his voice expressionless.

“No. Not a good position.” Ceawlin then had gone on to detail the rest of his plan. They would fight under three commands. Cutha and Cuthwulf would have the thanes from Banford under them. To Sigurd, who would fight on the left, Ceawlin had given the best of the thanes from Bryn Atha—and the inexperienced ceorls from Wight. Ceawlin himself had taken the remaining Bryn Atha thanes and the Britons for the center.

Sigurd looked at the men lined up behind him now and gave them an encouraging grin. He was pleased to see Penda had taken his position on the far left. His strong presence would discourage any thoughts the inexperienced ceorls might have of breaking and running. The men all stood quietly and watched Edric’s men crossing the ford. As Ceawlin had expected, Edric did not come toward the north face of the hill, but swerved to the right, to come at the hill from the gentler slope on the east. Ceawlin called to his leaders, and the line on the hill promptly swung around to face the direction from which Edric would now be coming.

The sky was still gray and promised rain, but the visibility was now fairly decent. There was dead silence on the hill as all eyes were trained on the marching war band below them. Sigurd saw Edric’s thanes hit the bog, saw them waver and then halt.

For a brief moment Sigurd held his breath. What would Edric do? Would he come on or would he go back, perhaps try the hill from the north? Perhaps retreat until he could meet Ceawlin on better ground?

Edric was coming on, his men marching more slowly as the ground softened and pulled at their feet. Sigurd could feel the quiver of excitement from the men behind him. The scent of the battle was in their nostrils. He looked at Ceawlin but the prince was still, eyes trained on the war band below. He had told them yesterday that he did not want to charge until the enemy was directly below them. If they did not wait, the chance of being outflanked by Edric’s larger numbers was too great.

A loud battle cry from the far right of their line caused Sigurd to jump. Then he stared in utter astonishment as his father and his brother went charging down the hill followed by the thanes of their command.

Sigurd’s eyes flew to Ceawlin and saw a look of absolute fury on the prince’s face. Sigurd’s heart dropped into his stomach. What was his father thinking of? Ceawlin had told him distinctly to wait….

His eyes went compulsively back to the charging Saxons, and as he watched, they smashed into the line on Edric’s left. The line broke under the force of Cutha’s charge.

Penda shouted, “Shall we go too?”

“No,” Sigurd called back firmly. “Not until the prince gives the signal.”

One of Edric’s men was shouting furiously, trying to rally his men. Even at this distance, Sigurd recognized the gray head of Onela. The Winchester thanes began to reform on either side of Cutha’s command; Ceawlin’s men were now in danger of finding themselves surrounded.

“Sigurd!” Ceawlin shouted. “Get all the way to their right and press them toward the center. Now!”

Sigurd raised his sword, shouted first to Penda, then to the rest, and charged down the hill at Edric’s right. As he ran, Sigurd saw that the battle-wise Winchester thanes were spreading their line thinner, to avoid being outflanked by Sigurd’s men. Consequently the Winchester line was but three deep when Ceawlin and the Bryn Atha thanes hit it in the middle like an avalanche.

Edric’s center crumpled like paper. Sigurd shouted with glee and began to close in from the right. On the opposite side of the battle, Cutha did the same. The thanes from Winchester wavered, then collapsed backward, turned, and ran for the ford.

Edric, the eorls, and the rest of the mounted men reached their horses, escaped across the ford, and headed back toward Winchester. Ceawlin’s men pursued the men on foot, but they had been given orders earlier to capture and not to kill. Ceawlin wanted to begin his kingship with the blood of as few as possible on his hands. He ended the day with seventy men from the Winchester war band swearing to acknowledge him as their lord.

Next he marched for Winchester.

Edric had closed the gates and posted men with arrows on all the walls. Ceawlin camped outside the gate and prepared to conduct a siege. Edric could have but a few men inside Winchester with him, a few men and a large number of women. The food wagons that normally rolled into the royal enclave from the vils would be stopped. They could eat the horses, of course, and there would be vegetables from the gardens within, but come the fall the food would be gone. In the meanwhile, there was Venta close by to amuse his men, and all the food that would be stopped from going into Winchester.

Ceawlin settled down and prepared to wait.

“Cerdic! Where are you, Cerdic?” Niniane peered around the corner of the chapel to the fields beyond. Where had that child gone to? And it was so cold … She pulled the folds of her cloak more closely around her and called once more. Never again would she entrust Cerdic to the care of that foolish serving girl.

There was little trouble Cerdic could get into around the monastery, but Niniane always feared the water. Glastonbury was virtually an island, with only one land bridge across the lake it sat within, and ever since Cerdic had begun to walk, Niniane had worried that he would fall into the water and drown. “Cerdic!” she called again, panic beginning to sound in the shrillness of her voice.

“Here, Mama.” A small blond head peeked up from behind the woodpile. “I play in the wood,” he said winningly as she strode across the chapel yard to grab him.

“You know you are not to go out of Riba’s sight,” Niniane scolded. “From now on you will have to stay with me. It seems I cannot trust you with anyone else.”

His large blue-gray eyes, the same color as her own, looked up at her with blithe unconcern. Niniane held out her hand and he put his small, grubby paw into hers and walked beside her back toward the convent. It was a long time since Niniane had been able to carry this small, sturdy son of hers. At twenty-two months he was big for his age, and extremely independent. Too independent, she thought as she looked with a mixture of love and exasperation on the sunny golden head that seemed to reach higher against her with every passing day.

“Look, Mama,” Cerdic said, and pointed. “What those men?” Niniane looked also and saw a group of horsemen riding over the land bridge and into the monastery grounds. With a great leap of her heart, she recognized the lead rider. It was Gereint. She began to run forward, dragging Cerdic along by the hand.

Gereint saw her coming as soon as his horse came off the bridge. He raised his hand to halt his men and dismounted to meet her. Niniane came to an abrupt halt about six feet from the young Briton, causing Cerdic to trip and fall to his knees. She stared at Gereint out of fearful eyes, and waited.

“My lady,” Naille’s son said formally, “I have come to escort you back to Winchester to join the king.” Then, as her eyes grew enormous, he grinned. “Edric surrendered three weeks ago. Ceawlin has exiled him and Guthfrid to East Anglia, where Guthfrid’s father is king. It is all over, Niniane. Ceawlin is king.”

Niniane moved forward again and flung herself into Gereint’s arms. “I can’t believe it,” she kept repeating. “I can’t believe it.”

He was patting her on the back. “Believe it, for it is true. Ceawlin sent me to bring you to him at Winchester.”

“Mama. Mama. Who that man? Mama …” Niniane finally heard her son’s worried voice and let go of Gereint.

“Good God,” said Gereint, looking down at the child, who was snatching at his mother’s tan wool skirt. “This can’t be Cerdic?”

“It certainly is Cerdic.” Niniane wiped the tears from her eyes and Cerdic pushed himself between her and the Briton. “Go away,” he said fiercely in British to Gereint. “Me no like you. You make my Mama cry.”

“It’s all right, my love,” said Niniane, and knelt so she could look into his face. “I’m crying because I’m happy. This is Gereint and he has brought us good news. We are to go back with him to Winchester to join your father.” And she smiled radiantly into the small face of her son.

“Oh,” said Cerdic, unimpressed. His mother had told him much of his father, but Cerdic had no memory of Ceawlin at all. “Baby too?”

“Baby too.”

“Baby?” asked Gereint.

Niniane turned the radiance of her face onto him and said, “Ceawlin has another son.”

They had to take a litter because of the children. Ceawlin had sent Gereint and a British escort for obvious reasons, and Niniane’s party encountered little difficulty as it passed through British Dumnonia on its way to the old Roman road that went from Aquae Sulis to Venta. The November weather was chill and damp, but Niniane kept the baby well-wrapped and within the relative shelter of the litter. The baby alternately ate and slept and gave his mother little trouble. The same could not be said for his older brother.

Cerdic hated the litter and he squirmed and complained and poked at the baby, of whom he was jealous, whenever Niniane was not looking. It was not until Gereint offered to take him up on his horse that Niniane had any peace from him. Thereafter he rode with Gereint until he was tired, and then he came into the litter and slept.

It was slow going and Niniane was heartily sick of the litter herself by the time they passed into Wessex. She would very much have liked to ride, but it was too cold to expose the baby to the wind, and she felt uneasy about leaving him alone. So she jolted along inside the litter, playing peekaboo games and singing to keep the baby amused and scolding Cerdic when he still took the occasional jealous swipe at his new little brother.

She learned the story of Ceawlin’s campaign from Gereint when they stopped in the evenings to make camp.

“They besieged Winchester for six months?” Niniane asked incredulously when first she heard of Ceawlin’s final tactic.

“Yes. There was no fighting, Niniane. Simply, Ceawlin starved them out.”

“Dear God,” said Niniane. “But there were women in Winchester!”

“I know.” Gereint shrugged. “It wasn’t easy on them, I fear. They all looked rather scrawny and hollow-eyed when finally it was over. But no one died. Or at least, very few.”

Niniane thought of Nola and Hilda and all the girls from the bower. “Wasn’t there any other way?”

“Edric could have ended it at any time. All he needed to do was surrender. Which he had to do in the end, anyway.”

“But Ceawlin did not kill him?”

“No. He let the three of them go, Edric, Guthfrid, and Edgar. I thought he was wrong. But he said he did not want a blood feud with East Anglia and he was sure to have one if he killed Guthfrid. So he let them all go. Three of the eorls went with them, the ones who would not swear allegiance to Ceawlin.”

“I’m glad,” said Niniane. “Ceawlin was right. The Saxons have a terrible code of blood vengeance, Gereint. Ceawlin will be safer with Guthfrid alive than he would be if she were dead.”

“I suppose so.” Gereint was clearly unconvinced. “She is a very nasty woman. When she stared at Ceawlin she looked just like a snake.”

Niniane shuddered. “I know. She hates him for killing her son Edwin. And Edwin tried to kill Ceawlin first, Gereint. I know. I was there and I saw it. So did almost everyone else in Winchester, including Guthfrid. But still she blames him, blames him and wants revenge. I don’t think she will change until she is dead.”

“Well, for the moment at least she is safe in East Anglia.” Gereint smiled at her. “You will be the new queen, Niniane. How does it feel?”

“Ask me in a year,” she replied, and at that he laughed.

Niniane did not want to enter Winchester in a litter, and so she rode the last few miles of the journey. Gereint had Cerdic before him on his horse and Niniane held the baby while Ferris walked before her holding the reins. Before she had moved from the litter she had combed her hair and washed her face. Her clothes were wrinkled and she smelled regrettably like the baby, but there was little she could do about that, she thought.

It had been one year and three months since last she had seen Ceawlin. She had longed for him during all that time, lived for nothing but the moment when they would be reunited, and now that that moment was at hand, she found she was afraid. A year was a very long time. What if he had changed, what if he had found another woman … ?

This was a subject she had refused to think about all during the time she had spent at Glastonbury, but now, with their reunion only a matter of moments away, she could think of nothing else.

He had been camped outside the walls of Winchester for six months, and Venta was only a mile away. If she had known that … She had not worried overly when she knew him to be at Bryn Atha, or flying around the countryside harassing Edric. But he had been near Venta for six months. Niniane knew why the thanes had gone so often to Venta, knew the kind of entertainment that was readily available in the city. She remembered Ceawlin’s comment when she had balked about bringing women into Bryn Atha. “I have enough to keep me busy right here,” he had said. But she had not been there this time to keep him busy. Perhaps he had found someone he liked better than her.

Stop
this,
she told herself. You are going to see your husband for the first time in over a year. You are bringing him a new baby. Do not ruin all your happiness by worrying about what may not ever have happened.

“There it is, my lady,” said Gereint next to her. And she looked ahead and saw in the distance the great wooden stockade of Winchester. “It is hard to believe that a place like this has existed for nigh on twenty years and we knew nothing about it,” he said.

“I know,” Niniane replied. “I remember how I felt when first I saw Winchester.” She went on to tell Gereint the tale of her first coming to the Saxon royal enclave, talking to keep herself from thinking, to keep herself from being afraid.

A few minutes later she interrupted herself to say, “They have seen us.”

Gereint turned to look toward the gate. “Yes.” Then, “Someone is coming to meet you.”